Predicting Students Academic Performance
Using Support Vector Machine
Iti Burman1, Subhranil Som2
1
Department of Information Technology, Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India
2
Amity University Uttar Pradesh, Noida, India
1
itiburman0017@gmail.com, 2ssom@amity.edu
Abstract: Education, more often known as learning, is a way
of exchanging knowledge with the perspective of betterment
of individuals and progress of the nation as well. The
objective of this paper is to help students to improve their
performance with the use of applications of data mining. It
makes use of psychological features of students. The paper
uses multi classifier Support Vector Machine (SVM) to
classify the learners in the category of high, average and low
according to their academic scores. It is carried out using
linear kernel and radial basis kernel. It is noted that RBF
produces better results as compared to the linear kernel.
Predicting the performance of students in advance can
advantage both the institution and learner to take
measurable steps in order to enhance the learning process.
Keywords: Education, Data mining, SVM, Student
Performance, Prediction, Psychology
I. INTRODUCTION
Education plays a vital role in a person’s life. It helps in
overall development of an individual. Other than well known
learner pedagogue relation, there are several ways of learning
including narrating, conference meet, guidance, and analysis;
which is done at all stages of life. Education act as an input in
shaping the life of an individual. A student undergoes various
exams at various stages of life. The measure of success in the
exams especially in university entrance exam provides a
measure of their successful career as shown in [6]. Data
mining as a field in research tries to extract useful information
or patterns from the collected, processed and analyzed data. It
finds its relevance in various streams. Educational data mining
is a process of inferring interesting patterns from educational
data that come from educational institutions and web based
data; i.e. online and offline. It is an upcoming research area to
facilitate better learning among pupil. An individuals’
academic achievement is also based upon numerous non
academic parameters. Analysis done on Indian case study [1]
using Logistic Regression showed that non academic correlates
have an effect on CGPI of the learners. Psychology is an area
that deals with behavior and mind. It captures the actions
following state of mind according to the situations. In context
of education it can be utilized to enhance the learning process
by understanding the individuals’ behavior related to learning
and pedagogy.
978-1-5386-9346-9/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
SVM is a learning model, a supervised technique, used for
classification analysis of data. The algorithm works by finding
hyperplane which aims to widen the boundaries between two
sets of classes. The goal of classification is to separate the data
points into separate classes. SVM views these points as an n-
dimensional vector and tries to separate them with (n-1)
dimensional hyperplane. This mechanism is commonly known
as linear classifier. Various hyperplanes may exist to classify
the data, but it focuses on finding the one which provides
maximum separation.
Section 2 provides an overview of related work and discusses
about various prediction techniques and their accuracy rate
applied in this area. Section 3 explains the proposed
methodology used for prediction in our study. Results of our
study and their comparative analysis are given in Section 4. At
the end, section 5 provides the conclusion.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Prediction, an EDM technique, aims at envisioning the value
of a variable called predicted variable from some known set of
values called predictors from the data. One of the advantages
of prediction in EDM can be found in identifying the slow
learners in the classroom, so that at an early stage steps can be
taken to improve their performance. Various classification
techniques such as Naïve Bayes, Multilayer Perception,
REPTree, J48 and SMO have been applied to oversee the
students scoring low as discussed in [10]. Prediction has
played an important role in order to provide excellent learning
to the learners. Hamsa et al. [11] had developed a prediction
model to envision the scholarly performance of students based
on their scholastic parameters. The model uses two
classification techniques – Fuzzy genetic algorithm and
Decision tree; which targets the undergraduate and graduate
students. The model can also be used by the college and
various reputed companies to select the students for
recruitment. Shahiri et al. [12] has discussed about different
data mining approaches that can be applied to educational data
based on different parameters. It covers K nearest neighbor,
Support vector machine, Decision tree, Naïve bayes and
Neural network for classification. Gray et al. [13] studied the
psychometric factors of students to predict their academic
achievement and uses neural network and decision tree
approach for prediction. The factors considered under study
include personality, motivation and learning strategies; the NN
algorithm predicts with 69% of accuracy and decision tree
predicts with 65% of accuracy. Mishra et al. [14] has worked
upon psychometric, extracurricular and soft skills parameters
of learners and envisioned with accuracy of 88% by using
decision tree algorithm. Sembiring et al. [15] also worked on
psychometric factors as well and applied SVM on it. The
prediction accuracy was found to be 83%.
Richardson et al. [16] worked on psychological parameters for
learner’s scholastic performance. The parameters are divided
into five major categories – Personality, Motivation, Self
regulatory learning strategies, Learning approach and
Psychosocial contextual influences. Our study considered these
parameters and collected the data with questionnaire prepared
based on these psychometric parameters. It was found that
students’ scholarly achievement also depend on non
intellectual correlates than just academic correlates [17]. Also,
Meta analysis showed the correlation in students’ percentage
and non intellectual correlate.
III. PROPOSED METHODOLOGY
The steps of proposed methodology are depicted in Figure 1.
A. Support Vector Machine
SVM is a supervised learning technique that aims to classify
the data. It makes use of hyperplane for dividing the dataset
into classes with the gap as wide as possible known as margin.
It generates parallel lines for creating partitions. The margin is
the maximum distance between the nearest data points of the
classes. To reduce the generalization error, largest margin is
selected.
Fig. 1. Proposed model
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The SVM algorithm works as follows:
i. Separable case is the one in which data can be perfectly
linearly separated. Here, infinite numbers of boundaries are
possible and it selects the optimal hyperplane wherein the
boundary gives the maximum distance. Given a function:
f(y) = x.y + z, (1)
SVM divides the data points as:
f(y) > 0, iff y ‫ א‬X, and (2)
f(y) <= 0, iff y ‫ א‬Z (3)
The distance between the observation and the hyperplane is
given by |x.y + z|/||x||, and the margin is given as 2/||x||.
ii. Non separable case, where data points overlap. To classify
these data points, SVM performs restructuring of the data with
the use of transformation function represented as (Φ). It works
by mapping the scalar dot product of the data points to a higher
enough dimension where linear separation becomes possible.
B. Analysis
An important and most common task of Machine learning,
Classification, can be performed with various data mining
techniques. This paper focuses on classifying the students’ data
based on psychometric components into three classes: High,
Average and Low. Our problem is a multi classifier problem. It
makes use of Linear Kernel and Radial Basis Function Kernel.
The dataset consists of the records of the students collected
using Questionnaire based on their psychological parameters
which covers Personality, Motivation, Psychosocial contextual
influences, Learning strategies, Approach to learning and
Socio economic status [17]. The dataset consists of one
thousand records based on 29 non intellectual constructs of
students. For classification, we divide the dataset as - 70% of
the data has been used for training the model and testing is
done on the rest 30% of the dataset.
The linear kernel can be defined as the inner dot product [a, b]
and an arbitrary constant c, which can be mathematically
represented as:
k(a, b) = aTb + c (4)
The radial basis function kernel (RBF) can be defined as:
K (x,x') = exp [(-||x-x'||2) ], (5)
where x and x' are two input feature vectors, ||x-x'||2 is the
square of Euclidian distance and is calculated as: 1/2 2. The
value of the RBF kernel can be used as likeness measure which
varies between 0 and 1; it decreases with distance.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The proposed model for predicting the performance of students
is assessed using sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. The
results of training data set using different kernels have been
shown in figure 2 and figure 3; and the results of testing data
are discussed in table 1 and table 2.

A. Sensitivity
It is a statistical metric of accomplishment that measures the
positive values (like in our study, correctly identifying the
students in the category of High, Average and Low according
to the given parameters).

(6)

B. Specificity

It measures the negative or false values.

(7)

C. Accuracy
It is the statistical biasness that measures the trueness i.e.
difference between the observed value and the true value.

TP  TN
Accuracy u 100
TP  TN  FP  FN (8)
Fig. 3. Results of Training data set using Radial Basis Kernel
where, TP represents no. of true positives, FP represents no. of
TABLE I: CONFUSION MATRIX
false positives, TN represents no. of true negatives and FN
represents no. of false negatives. Prediction Linear Kernel Radial Basis Function
Kernel
H L A H L A
H 100 0 52 140 0 14
L 0 6 0 0 6 0
A 53 0 88 13 0 126

TABLE II: OVERALL STATISTICS

Statistics Linear Kernel Radial Basis

Accuracy 0.6488 0.9097
95% CI 0.5918, 0.7029 0.8713, 0.9396
p-value 1.158e-06 2.2e-16
High Low Average High Low Average
Sensitivity 0.6536 1.0000 0.6286 0.9150 1.0000 0.9000
Specificity 0.6438 1.0000 0.6667 0.9041 1.0000 0.9182
Fig. 2. Results of Training data set using Linear Kernel

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Fig. 4. SVM using Linear Kernel
The tuning of the model is done using grid with values ranging
from 0 to 5. It was found that Linear kernel provides the best
values at tuning parameter C=2 as shown above in Figure 4;
when the model run using Radial Grid Kernel, it calculated
variations and provides the best results of sigma at 0.1 and C at
2 as shown below in Figure 5.
Fig. 5. SVM using Radial Grid Kernel
V. CONCLUSION
This paper focuses on non intellectual parameters of students
which affect their study and academic growth. Utilization of
data mining in the field of education can prove to be a boon for
the society. Psychometric analyses of students’ behavior in
respect of learning help in enhancing their academic
performance. Various mining techniques like neural network,
decision tree, KNN, naïve bayes and SVM have been applied
to the educational data covering psychological factors. As
discussed in section 3, the accuracy rate of previous studies is
less than 89%. Our proposed model uses Support vector
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machine for classification of data and predict learners’ CGPI.
According to the statistics given in the Table 2 it was found
that Radial Basis Function kernel gives more accurate results
than Linear Kernel which is approximately 90%.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Vivekananda
Institute of Professional Studies and Amity University Uttar
Pradesh for their continuous support.
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